


To the Winding Roads We Take

by rimacchi



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Anxiety Disorder, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, I swear this has a happy ending, M/M, Panic Attacks, Romance, Soulmates, Soulmates AU, phichit being a good best friend
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-29
Updated: 2017-02-18
Packaged: 2018-09-13 04:22:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 19,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9106453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rimacchi/pseuds/rimacchi
Summary: Everyone gets a timer eventually. The shortest one Yuuri had ever seen was Yuuko’s which was only counting down from five until she met Nishigori. Yuuri’s, however, started at seven hundred only to freeze at fifty.Yuuri had never seen a frozen timer on anyone’s wrist but he never needed anyone to tell him that his soulmate was long dead.Or; Victor and Yuuri aren’t soulmates but they still try.





	1. stay close to me

**Author's Note:**

> So lately, I've read fics about Yuuri and Victor being soulmates and I was like: Hey, why don't I write one but Yuuri and Victor AREN'T soulmates? ~~please kill me now~~
> 
> This has some angst but I swear, this has a happy ending because Victuuri has brought me nothing but joy. This story has three parts and since I'm almost finished with it, I can update earlier on this one.
> 
> Anyway, I hope you enjoy this fic~

The glowing red numbers appear on everyone’s wrists.

The first time he saw it was on his mother’s, hers were big zeroes separated by a colon. The numbers on her wrists don’t move like how he saw Mari’s did the following day. The numbers on Mari’s wrist weren’t zeroes like his mother’s but counting numbers going down each day like a total reversal of the digital clocks he would see on train stations and television

“Mom,” He tugged on his mother’s yukata, eyes still shimmering with curiosity and stuck on the circular numbers tattooed on her wrist. “Why doesn’t yours move like Mari nee-chan’s?”

The way his mother just smiled like she remembered the happiest memory of her life made Yuuri bubble up in even more curiosity. Were the numbers really that important?

“Mine were just like your sister’s when I was younger.” She replied in a voice full of nostalgia, observing her wrist like it was like his sister’s; glowing angrily for all to see and moving non-stop every single day. “It shined brighter back then and the numbers were counting down until I met your father.”

His mother continued everything else with the same old love story he always heard from both of them. How they met, how they fell in love, how they were destined for each other and how their fate was written in their stars and everything was wonderful and now they run a hot springs resort in Hasetsu. Back then, it never really made sense to Yuuri on how such numbers brought some kind of specific shine to other people’s eyes --- all they did was make his head hurt in math class --- but as time passed, a single word just tied everything up.

Soulmates.

x x x 

The shortest timer he ever saw was Yuuko’s.

He never really knew why Yuuko was all jumpy and giddy one day at school until he noticed a glint of red on her hand. At first, he thought it was blood but blood never glowed like his glow in the dark stickers and blood never resisted flowing at the force of gravity so before he could scream bloody murder at Yuuko’s hand, he took another peek and saw the red tint forming into numbers like his sister’s.

“You have yours?” Yuuri asked, still unsure if he needed to change the prescription on his glasses again.

Yuuko smiled at him, wider than usual, like she already knew the meaning behind Yuuri’s words. She brought her wrist to his face and there, in full light, Yuuri saw how big and bright the numbers actually were. An enormous five combined with some zeroes and a colon extended over Yuuko’s wrist.

“I just got it and it immediately says five days, can you believe it?” Yuuko cheered, her voice filled with excitement.

Yuuri stared at his wrist in the middle of the conversation. His wasn’t even there yet but for a while, he thought of being Yuuko’s match, thought of the numbers on his wrist forming into the same number as hers and going zero at the exact same time but the thought was just absurd. Soulmates don’t work that way. They go zero when they meet for the first time and Yuuri and Yuuko had been with each other since forever. 

His heart sank at the thought. 

Yuuko looked so happy when she got her timer, happier even when she found out it started counting down at five but Yuuri could feel anything but happiness.

x x x 

Getting his timer was a bittersweet experience.

Yuuko always hung out in Ice Castle, putting on skates and gliding freely on the ice like a dancing fairy; like her feet had wings. He was always entranced with how Yuuko moved, how Yuuko’s step sequences would go and how her jumps would look s flawless and graceful at the same time. She looked like she came out of a fairy tale and Yuuri always loved it when he would catch her skating once he opened the doors to the rink.

This was the only time he didn’t.

For the first time, he couldn’t hear the sound of blades hitting the ice, there was only silence being sliced by whispers that tempted to enter his ears and when he finally entered the rink, there stood Yuuko in front of a tall, black haired man. 

“Yuu--” He stopped himself midway. There was something weird about them looking each other. He could see glints of light dancing in their eyes and could feel warmth from their unspoken words almost melting the ice below them. 

Yuuko always looked beautiful but now, now that her eyes looked prettiest just tugged Yuuri’s heart tight enough for him to stop breathing --- enough for it to hurt. 

Those eyes were not for him. 

Watching Yuuko was like reading magical fairy tales. The thing was Yuuri wasn’t the prince who saves the land and kisses the girl. In this case, this was Nishigori.

Without anymore words, he turned his back and walked home without either two noticing his presence; like he had become a ghost. He could remember how his mother and even Mari talked about their timers, talked about their soulmates. Their eyes had the same sparkle that Yuuko and Nishigori have now and back then, Yuuri would stare in awe while they talked, fascinated but as he walked away from Ice Castle and soaked himself immediately in the hot springs, the idea of soulmates had never been so heart wrenching.

The next day, he thought he might have cut himself out of loneliness unconsciously last night only to find that the glowing on his wrist were numbers. 700 to be exact. 700 hundred days. 

He has a soulmate.

When he went for his daily skate, Yuuri saw both Yuuko and Nishigori putting on their skates and when his eye caught the red in Yuuko’s wrist dulled and replaced with zeroes, he felt the same sting he did the other day only to be replaced with a tiny glint of hope. 

He has a soulmate. 

In 700 days, someone would look at him with the light dancing in their eyes like how Yuuko’s eyes sparkled. 

He has a soulmate and this was enough.

x x x 

Victor Nikiforov was a man that stole his eyes, his eyes and eyes alone for his heart beat for the soulmate he would meet in more than a hundred days time.

But he couldn’t deny that Victor was beautiful. 

Long flowing silver hair, blue eyes, graceful moves --- he looked more beautiful than Yuuko and unlike her, Victor never gave off some kind of fairy-like aura, it was something that Yuuri couldn’t explain but his eyes were glued to the radiating screen of the small television Nishigori had brought from his house when his mother had bought a brand new one. 

Each jump Victor made just took Yuuri’s breath away and he didn’t know why. The sound of his skates on the ice delivered by worn out speakers, the way his expression changes at the beat of music, the way he smiled as he brought up a gold medal with a toothy grin --- it made something flutter inside him, like he was flying, like he was free.

_I have to skate like him._

There was a smile creeping onto his face. Victor Nikiforov was beautiful and before Yuuri knew it, he became a fan.

He would come early to watch livestreams of Victor’s competitions, he decorated his room’s walls in Victor’s posters and when he was on the ice, Yuuko was beside him and they would have Nishigori hold up the phone so they could copy the many different programs Victor had.

Each program had a story, each program had different emotions but all the same, it made Yuuri feel free. 

Yuuri had read magazines, interviews and features dedicated to the Russian skater and when he received the same kind of poodle he had seen in one of the articles in a skating magazine that Yuuko wanted him to read, he felt like he was allowed to die right on the spot. 

Vicchan. It sounded so right.

The dog loved to lie down on Yuuri’s bed right next to him and as his had petted the brown fur of his newly given pet, his eyes wandered on the walls he had filled with pieces of the world of figure skating and of course, pieces of Victor that he could find available. Victor never ceased to impress him, Victor never ceased to make him feel… special.

He brought up a hand to his face and the red numbers greeted him with an unwelcoming aura.

The last time he saw it, it was 700, now it was 750. 

Mari told him about such phenomena before. In some special cases, the numbers increase instead of the opposite, meaning something happened to his soulmate that delayed their meeting. 

Yuuri sighed at this. It was okay, he wasn’t disappointed. He could wait, he has always been patient and Mari already praised him for that.

“I know that you’re so patient that you’d wait for world peace if you have to but Mom doesn’t understand!” He remembered Mari saying, puffing her cigarette in anger. “She shouldn’t spoil such a patient boy or you’ll end up greedy. That or there’s just favoritism. I’ve always been some kind of problem child after all.”

Something happened to his soulmate. The thought was circling around his mind. Who could it be? Would his soulmate be a girl or a boy? Would he or she be a foreigner or Japanese? Would they like figure skating the way he does?

The sudden blank pause that came to his mind was an effect of his eyes wandering to the very first poster of Victor he bought the very next day he saw him skating in the Junior Grand Prix from a half-broken mini television.

And then, there was a sudden thought that zoomed in his head like a jet plane.

What if Victor Nikiforov was his soulmate? What if in 750 days time, he would be able to meet the Russian and would look at Yuuri like how Yuuko looked at Nishigori?

The thought was ridiculous and he shook it off the moment the question ended. 

The idea was too good to be true.

x x x 

Taking figure skating seriously meant more exercises, more tough diets, more restricted food, more ballet, more, more and more. It was truly different from the days he copied Victor’s routines with Yuuko. In this kind of career, Yuuri shouldn’t copy programs but make his own from scratch. Find or compose music, add choreography and quads as well as decide a theme but of course, he didn’t do this all by himself. He had people to help him do that unlike Victor.

Victor lets his music be composed, he choreographs his own programs and he decides his own theme; he was a writer who wrote off words on the ice with the way his body danced with the music. 

Yuuri wasn’t a writer --- Yuuri wasn’t like Victor. That alone convinced him that he had a long winding road ahead of him. Yuuri was more of a reader than a writer. He would take inspiration from other skaters and create his own programs, he would take light from music he had already heard instead of composing them; this was his pace and it was far from Victor’s.

He knew the skating world could turn into hell into seconds. At first it would be watching Victor in that tiny television screen and the next it would be failing his high school exams because of practicing --- he barely made it but he graduated nonetheless --- and last was feeling pathetic in a group of talented skaters in America once college came.

He took skating seriously and of course, his family full on supported him and offered that Yuuri should study abroad with matching schools to study in. There was a variety of choices and he could remember hundreds of pamphlets on his table. There was a sports school in Korea, another one in Russia but Yuuri settled for training in Detroit.

He didn’t really know if that was a good or bad choice but Yuuri did know that when he arrived in America, it was good at first, he made new friends and enjoyed the culture but a whole lot of things were proven to him like he was being slapped on the face:

He was just a dime of a dozen skaters.  
He wasn’t skilled enough for anything.  
Victor was out of his league.

Entering the rink was just suffocating. The sound of the blades on the ice sounded so painful but even so, he did skate. He took in power from his legs for quads, for step sequences, over and over, rinse and repeat because if he didn’t he will never be better. Because if he didn’t then he wouldn’t be of any use.

His lungs breathed in pressure mixed with the ice, his body was cramped and paralyzed by anxiety.

_I want to quit._

When he felt his body land the ice with a thud, he could feel the certain numbness spreading from his chest to his cold feet.

_I want to quit._

He tried to wipe the sweat dripping from his bangs and sticking onto his skin but before his fingers could touch him, the glaring red timer shined as if to remind him that it was still there; that his destined one was still waiting. He didn’t notice how the numbers lowered but he guessed that it wasn’t his fault for concentrating on skating.

But other than that, there was a certain thought in his head that drummed so much that it ached.

“Where are you…?” He asked out loud to his beloved as if that person could hear him --- as if Yuuri was asking for a reply.

Yuuri didn’t know when he forgot the cold feeling of ice against his back and he didn’t know when the tears started coming out of his eyes, the sobs escaping from his lips or when his body started to shiver from the pure fear of ending up like this his whole life; just lying down on the ice, pathetic and sobbing without any accomplishment. 

He wanted to quit, he really wanted to but there was a tight thread on his feet that bound him to the ice because Yuuri knew that it will be the only thing he could ever return to to feel loved and free even if it absolutely didn’t seem like it anymore.

“Yuuri…?” He heard the doors open and the voice reverberated on the walls. It must be Phichit. 

Yuuri continued to lie there, wiping his tears for Phichit not to see.

“Are you okay?” Phichit asked when he suddenly appeared in his field of vision. His black hair was messy and the hoodie he wore came off in a shade of blue under the fluorescent lighting. “It’s late, aren’t you practicing too hard? It’s not healthy to sleep on the ice, y’know.”

“Yeah, I’ll be out soon.” Yuuri smiled as he sat up, forgetting how the anxiety was eating him up whole at that very spot. 

“Let’s go together.” Phichit replied, offering a hand to him and Yuuri noticed that his other one held a can of coffee from the near convenience store and he figured that Phichit knew that he would be in the rink. “If Ciao Ciao were to catch us, I know I can make a more believable excuse than you.”

It was then that he felt his feet ache. He didn’t want to stand up but Phichit’s hand was still offered to him so he grabbed it and stood up, removed his skates and turned off the lights, hoping that Celestino wouldn’t notice that a skater was up having a late night skate. The walk to the dormitories was a lot more silent than he expected but that was probably because Phichit knew that he was tired.

“Here,” The coffee was handed to Yuuri but he didn’t open it. He chose to have a long night’s rest rather than a night alone with his thoughts but he thanked Phichit nonetheless. It was then that he saw Phichit’s timer; glowing red like the others. “Still too many days, right?”

Yuuri flinched at the words. Phichit must have noticed that he was staring at it.

“No, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have---” He didn’t know what word of apology he could offer after seeing something that could be considered as private unless shown intentionally. Times are symbols of love, after all.

“No, no, don’t apologize.” Phichit cut him off with a laugh. “We’re best friends so a timer is no big deal.”

At times like this, he was just glad to have Phichit as a friend.

x x x 

Grand Prix Final could be described as anything but wonderful.

If Yuuri had to assign a word to it then the perfect word would be ‘nightmare’; a nightmare that would be enough to drown himself in the hotel bath tub.

The news about him qualifying for the Grand Prix Final made him ecstatic and he could remember that Phichit wouldn’t stop screaming out of excitement that his best friend was competing at a big competition such as GPF. Yuuri would spend all day skating, so much that Celestino would have to drag him out of the rink when night came. There were nights when he couldn’t sleep, thinking that his hard work actually brought him somewhere and for the very first time in years, he would be able to meet his life long idol named Victor Nikiforov not as a fan but as a fellow competitor --- an equal, it was a dream come true.

Part of him now actually wished it was just a dream.

_“Yuuri, Vicchan passed away.”_ Were words being hesitantly said by his sister, her voice electronic and shaking from the phone.

The next words were unheard syllables. 

Vicchan, the dog he named after Victor, died. It felt like he had lost a part of his family and he couldn’t bear the heavy strings tangling and drowning his heart. Something urged him to come home, he needed to come home but the thought of not being present for GPF scared him too much that he couldn’t bring himself to.

He hated that part of himself too.

“I’m sorry but I’ll come home immediately when I can.” The words were to difficult to say, as if his mouth was suddenly limited to a number of words.

 

He was staring at his timer before his free skate, glowing red as always with a huge fifty lining his wrist. His soulmate could be watching in the crowd or on the other side of the earth but the thought alone wasn’t enough to erase the anxiety rushing to his head.

Victor’s short program was flawless. Even more perfect than how he usually saw it on screen. Victor looked beautiful on television but seeing him up close felt like seeing an angel dance before his eyes and he just couldn’t look away. Victor was leading him to a whole new world with him skating.

“This is Victor Nikiforov.” He could say to himself but it led to another thought. This is Victor Nikiforov and I’m just Yuuri Katsuki.

Yuuri couldn’t count the number of times he missed his jumps or the number of times he touched the ice during his free skate performance but when the music finally ended, there was a burning feeling rushing to his feet just begging him to run away and so, with much disappointment in himself, he did and went over to the kiss cry with Celestino patting his shoulder as if to comfort him.

Last place. It was expected but Yuuri still felt disappointed nonetheless. He could have done better, he should have done better. 

The image of Victor Nikiforov was in front of him, on the podium. His magenta like costume shining in the light and his gold medal was around his neck, there were flowers being thrown in the rink and Victor had a wide smile when he raised his medal and bouquet in joy. Yuuri was seated near the rink side but Victor, who was just a few meters away, felt so far from him like there was a whole universe between them and Yuuri just couldn’t reach him.

The cheers were getting louder and the lights flashing from cameras were becoming annoying. He couldn’t look at the scene. He just couldn’t. He felt so inferior and naive that he could be in the same level as Victor even if he really wasn’t in reality. Lady Luck was playing with him, giving him fake wings to take him to a fake sky and when reality caught up, it dragged him down in a second and Yuuri had realized that maybe he really wasn’t suited for competitive skating after all.

The corner of his timer peeked out of his jacket but when Yuuri lowered the sleeves to make his timer a distraction from the yelling crowd, he could only stare in shock seeing the red glow vanish and fade to black, blending to his skin like a tattoo. The colon between zeroes stopped blinking and as it did, Yuuri could feel a terrible ache in his heart that just made him want to scream but he bit his lip and let the tears fall from his eyes as he brought his wrist closer and held it tightly like his hand was a flower he would hold shakily at a funeral.

It really was because he didn’t need anyone to tell him that at the moment the timer turned black, the numbers stopped counting down or adding up. He didn’t need anyone to tell him that his timer stopped, he just knew it did.

And he didn’t need anyone to tell him that his soulmate just died.

x x x 

His season ended like a crashing plane and he might think that his career would, too.

Minako was the first one to greet him at the train station but he couldn’t tell her the words running into his mind --- about a frozen timer, about a dead soulmate. It was the same with his family, too. 

The very first night he spent in Hasestsu was the time he was back in Ice Castle in front of Yuuko, who was already married to Nishigori. It felt like being a child again, showing Yuuko a new program he of Victor that he tried to skate only now that Yuuko was older and was a mother and Yuuri was a man with a downhill career.

Ice skating brought him so much pressure but after the Grand Prix Final, he sought comfort from ice skating anyway, practicing like a little kid he was back then when he just discovered Victor. There was a small phone in front of him, showing a performance of Victor’s recent free skate program and with all the time he had, he spent it on learning every quad, every step by heart, he lost himself once again in Victor’s skating and just focused on how the music made his heart still and how the blades hitting the ice felt so right even if it wasn’t the past few days.

And now, Yuuko was watching him skate the very same program he tried to perfect for no absolute reason with only silence dancing on the air.

_Stay Close to Me_

He never ever thought that he would be skating like Victor but these were the steps that Victor choreographed and this was the song that Victor chose and those were enough for him to skate it with full confidence not as a skater but as Katsuki Yuuri --- the man who simply loved ice skating and the man who followed Victor steadily.

He could hear the music in his ears underneath the silence of his home rink and the lyrics just spill from his mouth.

_Stammi vicino_  
_Non te ne andare_  
_Ho paura di perderti_

He dances gracefully like how Minako taught him and he skates like how Yuuko guided him back in the days. He smiles like how Phichit would during practice and overall, he would feel like Victor who gave him so much even without them meeting. 

This was Yuuri Katsuki. 

_Stay close to me_  
_Don’t go_  
_I’m afraid of losing you_

He could remember the black numbers on his wrist that will continue to stay still for as long as he will breathe and with this, he wanted to say those words dearly: Stay close to me, don’t go and I’m afraid of losing you, to whoever it was who held the same numbers as him.

He really wanted to.

Now he will never have a chance.

x x x 

Yuuri couldn’t hear Yuuko’s apologetic voice from his phone. He knew he had enough hours of sleep but that simple post and the following comments just danced in front of his eyes like he had spontaneously became psychotic.

 **_Yuuri Katsuki Tried to Skate Victor Nikiforov’s FS Stay Close to Me_**

It was everywhere and with the video being called viral, Yuuri probably thought that it was the best day to commit suicide to follow his now dead dignity.

“Yuuri! What’s with that video? It’s being retweeted everywhere!” Minako came barging in his room, screaming in panic and Yuuri was too frozen and shocked to entertain her.

Yes, he felt like he could die out of embarrassment.

_**Vvv: @v-nikiforov** have you seen this!?!?! _  
_**Skater-otaku:** omg this is dope! **@v-nikiforov** that’s one fan you have~~ _  
_**Astrauss:** waaaah! Katsuki yuuri is **@v-nikiforov** ’s fan??? wwwww _  
_**Poppypa:** why does he even have enough time to do this after losing at gpf? Lolololololol **@v-nikiforov** _

Yuuri was enough of a fan to know Victor Nikiforov’s user name and seeing it being mentioned everywhere at every video of him imitating his FS program was like an arrow piercing his heart. Victor Nikiforov could see it; the Victor Nikiforov could see it.

And Victor Nikiforov did see it.

x x x 

Victor Nikiforov was in front of him. In the flesh, buck naked and speaking about something so unbelievable that Yuuri figured that it could have been another language. Victor wasn’t in a tiny television screen or in a page from a magazine; he wasn’t out of reach like when he was on the rink last Grand Prix Final but Victor was in front of him, calling his name.

Victor was _in front_ of him.

“Yuuri, I’m going to be your coach and I’m going to make you win the Grand Prix Final!” Those words really came from Victor’s mouth and Yuuri wasn’t dreaming.

Stay Close to Me had really brought Victor to him.

And for the very first time since the end of that devastating Grand Prix Final, Yuuri forgot about the grief brought to him by his frozen timer and lost soulmate.


	2. don't go

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Yuuri tries to make up for his soulmate’s lost love through skating and unavoidably, through Victor as well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's an update and Happy New Year! Hope you all have a wonderful start of 2017~ ~~I swear I'll be wasting mine even with the promises though lol~~ Anyway, part two down below with more Victuuri interaction slash hurt/comfort and a little fluff (????) I'm so sorry I suck at fluff but I still try ~~please don't kill me~~

Yuuri wasn’t sure on how to handle Victor. Sure, he did what Victor would instruct when it comes to skating; a quad here, a passionate step sequence there, fix his free leg here and fix that salchow there, training was a little weird with less people around since training in Detroit meant training with a lot of rink mates, including Phichit, but with Victor, it was just the two of them in the ice with Victor’s eyes only on him.

Sometimes, Yuuri would just buffer like those YouTube videos thrown in slow internet connection. He could feel his brain loading and his vision slowing down and he stared like Victor like he was one of those flat posters in his room but no, the Victor right now was in 3D and the Victor right now was calling his name, he couldn’t be a poster. But when Yuuri would lie down on bed with the Russian constantly banging on the door and requesting to sleep next to him, he wouldn’t dare to close his eyes and sleep, feeling that if he did happen to wake up the next day, Victor wouldn’t be there and he was back in his room in Detroit like everything was just a dream.

That, or he must have gone bonkers with the rest of his cracked up personality after GPF.

Victor, however, looked at him with those eyes that made him feel somewhat special; like he was a gem that deserved attention, a gem that attracted Victor alone and Yuuri doesn’t know why.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Yuuri asked in between pants when he tried standing up from a failed attempt to perfect a quadruple salchow.

Victor only hummed at the question, his cheek on his palm and his blue eyes on Yuuri, who was leaning on the rink side to remove shaved ice from the blades of his skates.

“Look at you like what?” Victor asked, his voice nonchalant. 

“Like that.” Yuuri emphasized and pointed at Victor’s sparkling eyes. 

Victor’s lips only lifted up into a smile as if to acknowledge the certain expression that Yuuri noticed. 

“Because you’re beautiful.” Yuuri almost slipped on the ice again when the words escaped Victor’s lips. Erase that, Yuuri could have had a full out heart attack on the spot but instead, he looked up at the Russian with great disbelief in his eyes and his face flushed red.

No words would come out, they were all stuck to Yuuri’s throat and all the thoughts racing inside his head were the times when he would watch Victor on that worn out television that Nishigori displayed inside the staff room in Ice Castle and how Yuuri would often comment the same thing to Victor through the screen. 

Beautiful.

It was a word that he wouldn’t even think of describing himself.

“What about you?” Yuuri’s eyes were brought back to Victor’s blue ones. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

Yuuri’s face flushed even more. He knew what Victor was talking about but he couldn’t bring himself to tell him that it was a way he stared at the dozens of posters stuck to the walls of his room that he tore down and snuck under the bed when Victor came to visit.

“N-No, I j-just…” Yuuri stuttered, not really sure on what to say and with a deep breath, he tried to calm down his thoughts. “I’m just still not convinced that this is real. I mean, I don’t know, did I have an accident and I’m now in a coma or something that’s why I’m seeing you? That or are we both dead?”

Victor didn’t reply but the grin on his face just faded like it wasn’t even there but his blue eyes were still on him as if scanning Yuuri’s soul. Without warning, Victor took Yuuri’s gloved hand and placed it on his chest like he wanted him to feel his heart beat as proof that he was alive.

“Am I real to you now?” Victor slowly leaned onto Yuuri and his lips whispered onto his ear. “I’m not a dream, Yuuri.”

The way Victor says his name was something out of a fiction book, something that Yuuri never expected to hear. His name was two syllables and he heard more than a hundred voices pronounce it to call him but Victor’s was enough for the world to get muted only to hear that certain clear sound of him mentioning his name.

“Yes,” Yuuri whispered back, looking at his hand on Victor’s chest. “You’re not a dream.”

xxx 

Yuri Plisetsky’s greeting to Yuuri when he arrived at Hasetsu was a flying kick that let the Japanese man fly for two seconds before face planting onto a glass door and rolling off on the floor like a rag doll. Truly, that was the most unique “Good morning” Yuuri has ever got but when Yuri Plisetsky did the kicking and yelling, it seemed more of a _“Fuck the morning, I’d kill you anytime of the day whenever I feel like it, bitch”_ rather than a “good morning”.

That must have been a glued up impression he had on him ever since he kicked the cubicle door Yuuri was in after his loss in GPF.

What could he say? Yuri had a whole curse word dictionary in his brain and he was not afraid to use it.

Yuri was young with a seven year gap from Yuuri but his skating surely didn’t look young at all. Furthermore, the boy knew how to do a perfect quad salchow, a jump that Yuuri never even managed to land in competitions. Yuri was indeed younger and he knew that he may be a lot more talented too.

However, Victor had other plans. 

Yuri was assigned to Agape and he was assigned to Eros.

The world just went mad in 0.2 seconds.

Yuuri never even had experience with love and more than that, he never even experienced anything to be considered as “sexual” for the program. Eros was something that flat out screamed failure at him at first glance. It was like imagining a more successful version of himself that actually made a move on the people he liked but that wouldn’t even be Yuuri at all since he had been loyal to his soulmate all this time. 

But when he was out to tell his thoughts about it, Victor’s thumb was on his lips and he closed the gap between their foreheads, staring at him face to face.

“I want to see that side of Yuuri soon.” His voice was low, almost seductive like Victor has been longing for that side of Yuuri for years --- like Victor was anticipating it and was preparing for it.

He couldn’t say no to it. So, with a chest full of courage and heart somehow full of inspiration, he said yes.

He started out Eros with katsudon on a whim, a thought that probably just sprung up like a newly bloomed daisy out of exhaustion and slight desperation to find something to bring life to Victor’s choreographed program but then, in the middle of the night, he knocked like a madman in front of Minako’s doorstep after a flash of epiphany. 

“Teach me how to move like a woman.” Minako was surely confused at first but the statement pieced Eros together, not perfectly but pieced up nonetheless. 

He figured that he was too loyal of a man and too conscious to ever think about taking the role as a playboy but just being an attraction, someone who could make people look at him was closer to how he truly feels because someone like him called out living legend Victor Nikiforov to abandon his career and just step down as number one in figure skating to be coach to Sochi Grand Prix Final last placer Katsuki Yuuri --- that was supposed to be amazing right? Something that more people could have done but couldn’t.

But Yuuri did. Average dime of a dozen figure skater Katsuki Yuuri just made Victor look back and be entranced by him through _Stay Close to Me._ on his small phone via YouTube.

And with those feelings, he skated.

_I’m the only one who can skate this beautifully._   
_I am the only one you can look at._   
_Mistakes won't be able to make me lose my charm._   
_I am the only one who brought Victor beside me._

And before he knew it, he was already at the ending pose of Eros and Victor was already hugging him. The next that came was a blur of events; the way how they announced his name, the way how the news of Yuri leaving for Russia and the way how Victor absolutely looked ecstatic when he went down the podium.

This was it, this was the starting point. Victor, who looked like a single ray of light shining through a path in which he got lost into was something that saved him. He had hope to take on his skates and find his will to compete once more.

At the time he tried changing out of his costume, the one Victor wore for his Junior Grand Prix which was definitely an honor to wear, the now black numbers on his wrist stared at him intently like it had eyes in the first place. Yuuri felt a tight ache in his chest and he wasn’t sure if that pain was some sort of warning or the unease he felt would come back to haunt him.

“Is there anything wrong, Yuuri?” Victor was at the door, his face painted in slight confusion.

Yuuri smiled at him.

“No, I’m just tired. Let’s go back?” When he said that, Victor just glowed in joy and hung onto him in excitement for another bath in the hot springs.

It was the first time he tried ignoring his timer.

xxx 

He felt awful after the Chugoku, Shikoku and Kyushu Championships.

It was the first time he ever slammed his face onto a wall during a performance and it sure left him dizzy but he didn’t remember much of the things that happened after that and it wasn’t because of the nausea creeping up onto him but it was because of the sort of joy his free skate gave him.

Skating a program that he and Victor worked hard to create. He and Victor --- it had a good ring to it.

The feeling of just being rebellious and disobeying Victor never felt this good; too good perhaps. The way he turned and jumped his quads, the way he just danced on the rink felt so unreal that he forgot that the whole reason he was skating that day was because of a competition. 

It was the most fun he ever had since GPF.

But right now, he honestly didn’t feel good. It was suddenly too cold everywhere he went and there would be coughs clinging onto his throat every five seconds and his head felt a lot worse than the time he just slammed it when doing a jump in the championships. Yuuri suspected it to be a cold but not a bad one that could affect his performance so with an adequate amount of medicine popped onto his mouth, he dashed to Ice Castle for practice. The next stage would be the China Cup and that would be a competition that he didn’t want to mess up.

Victor was already on the rink, as always. The only reason he wouldn’t be there in some instances would be him drinking on some bar the night before but with the next competition already on the corner, Victor turned his back on the alcohol for some time.

“We’ll be fixing those jumps in Eros first.” Victor said after his greeting. “You’re having trouble landing that salchow right?”

Yuuri nodded, his head still heavy but the way his feet started hurting inside his skates felt more annoying than the coughs clawing into his throat. He may have been practicing too much and the pain was familiar. He often got them in Detroit, slight bruises on his feet and aches because of wearing his skates for too long.

“Yuuri?” Victor called, his hand now on his shoulder and his eyes glinted with a shade of worry. “Are you okay?”

Yuuri just shook his head to remove the dullness piercing his skull.

“No, I’m fine.” Yuuri replied, trying to prevent another cough escaping from his lips. “That salchow in Eros right?”

Victor pursed his lips, as if unsatisfied with Yuuri’s response overall. 

“Are you sure we shouldn’t have had a rest day today?” Victor asked after a few seconds of thought. “Rest is important for an athlete too, Yuuri.”

“No, we shouldn’t waste time.” He replied in absolute honesty. He had no time to be resting when the competition is already in front of them. Furthermore, Yuuri had to remind himself that his coach is considered a living legend and his mistakes would surely brand Victor in unpleasant ways. Yuuri would do anything for it not to happen.

With a few moments of hesitation, Victor nodded and instructed him to perform Eros first after his warm up and Yuuri, with no word of reply, just complied and skated.

His feet really did ache. Simple movement was enough for him to wince out loud and he couldn’t even imagine what face he would be making if ever he attempted to do jumps but the cold from the ice helped to just numb his senses a bit so he insisted of skating Eros. He would have if they weren’t numb either way.

The first half was bearable. The second half was hell.

With the presence of quads, the numbness in his feet just broke and it was as if Yuuri could feel his skin breaking and his blood rushing through them in white hot heat.

_Triple axel._

He landed this one with a wince and Yuuri didn’t even know what to focus on anymore --- the drumming in his head, the pain of his feet or the simple thought of attempting to land a quad salchow afterwards.

He didn’t have much time to think about it so he shrugged off the stinging feeling and ache and proceeded to keep his character on. Eros. Katsudon. Seduction; all three words circulating inside his mind like wildfire over and over but in the midst of his thoughts, he could hear Victor calling, his voice muffled and unheard inside his ears like Yuuri was in a large ocean and sound was just another bubble of silence.

_Quadruple salchow._

And his vision warped when he jumped. Gravity took over and brought him down on his feet, the sensation of breaking felt ever so powerful as the blades just gave in when his knees buckled. He could feel his body just swaying and his lungs heaving through the cold air of the rink. The ice against his skin felt unnaturally hot, searing hot that he forced his muscles to stand up and skate but the way his mind messed up his thoughts made the attempt impossible. He caught a slight glimpse of blood on the rink, he didn’t stop to think if it as his. 

“Yuuri!” Victor’s voice was echoing and before he knew it, he could feel the warmth of Victor’s hands on him. “Yuuri, Yuuri are you all right?” 

Yuuri blinked, Victor’s eyes were wide and blue like Hasetsu’s wonderful seas and within the pounding of his head, he thought how the look of worry never really suited Victor’s face but at the moment, it was reassuring --- something that comforted him because that worry on him was for him and him alone, the care Victor displayed when he tried to make him sit up and hold him close was something that he hadn’t seen in posters or in TV but it was a sight that only his eyes could witness with Victor real and beside him.

Victor brought him back to the lockers where the ice skates were kept and for a while, he disappeared to ask Yuuko where the first aid kit was. At that moment, it gave Yuuri time to bring his mind back to reality and to examine himself and what the fuck actually happened in that rink.

The red stains he saw on the rink came from a scrape from his elbow and Yuuri suspected that he used it to lessen the impact of his fall. It wasn’t that deep and the bleeding already stopped.

He didn’t know what his feet looked like under the skates. The pain was burning more than how he started and he feared the image of them if he attempted to remove his skates but he had to even if he wanted or not so with a sigh, he undid his laces and started to take them off.

“No, let me do that.” Victor was at the door, a case of medical supplies already on his hands. Without expecting for a reply, he knelt down and tried to take Yuuri’s skates off as carefully as he can but no matter how careful Victor’s hands were with the skates, Yuuri still felt the ache with each attempt to remove them so he winced whenever the skates hit the bruises on his skin.

After some time that felt like an eternity, the skates were finally off and both of them were given an image of Yuuri’s feet covered in the colors of black and blue like a canvas splattered with the dark tones of paint all over with a slight flush of red around the blotches. 

Victor, who had one foot on his hands, looked at it with an unreadable expression. The joy in his eyes flushed out and his lips were slightly shaking.

“Victo--”

“Why did you do this?” Victor’s voice cut him off, his voice low and more serious than Yuuri had ever heard.

Yuuri didn’t reply. He never knew that Victor’s voice could even sound like that. He watched every single special and coverage about him yet Victor’s voice had never sounded so… genuine and full of feeling. Yuuri swallowed the lump in his throat along with the faded words that he forgot to say and Victor looked up at him with glassy eyes and brought Yuuri’s bruised foot over his lips and landed a feather light kiss.

“It’s not good to push yourself.” He whispered and finally set Yuuri’s foot down gently before getting the things he needed from the first aid kit. “You have a lot of people around you yet why can’t you even tell them your troubles? You’re hurting yourself over such things and I can’t bear it. Skating's supposed to be fun.”

This was a different kind of scolding he received from Victor. The only times Victor would tell him off would be the way he skated and his attitude towards it; never when he overslept or went late for practice but the way Victor sounded right now didn’t even sound like the usual him who would just smile it off while reprimanding him.

“Why do you look like your world’s crumbling down in front of you but you hide away your grief while it happens?” He winced when Victor applied medicine to the scrapes on the skin.

The world crumbling down sounded like a dead soulmate and a dead pet during a Grand Prix Final he lost.

“Victor…” Was the only thing he could manage to say and Victor couldn’t look at him or even slow down the treatment in the process.

“You have Yuuko, Minako and even your parents,” He wrapped the white bandages over Yuuri’s foot up to his ankle and when he stopped to apply one last wrap, his head slowly look up and Yuuri couldn’t take his eyes of his. “You have me.”

For the past months, he never once complained on how Victor would coach him. He agreed to make his own free program with him, he skated Eros, they had weird practice schedules and sometimes impromptu practice times but that was simply because he loved skating with Victor and his heart would beat so fast out of the happiness but for those months, he never took time to think about how Victor feels while looking at him when he’s not skating.

The only thing that kept his mind going was the bliss of having Victor beside him and all at the same time, the agonizing anxiety of having Victor leave him because he wasn’t good enough.

“You need to tell me these things. If you’re sick or unwell, if you’re anxious, if you’re trouble or if you need someone to talk to. Because you didn’t and pushed yourself and got hurt this much. Do you think you can skate if you get a permanent injury? I’m not good at reading people and I let this happen and I was just so worried when you fell and never got back up so --- as your coach I---” Victor paused and bit his lip, as if hesitating to say the next words. “As someone _who loves you_ … do you still not trust me?”

He stopped speaking. He looked like someone who just put a lid to prevent himself from speaking any further because the way Victor said those words, no, the way Victor looked was something that indicated that he had more things to say.

_I’m worried about you._   
_I’m here for you._   
_Why won’t you lean on me?_

His eyes had so many words and emotions he left unsaid but Victor’s lips moved and his voice came out soft like a whisper.

“Please value yourself more.” 

Yuuri looked at his bruised feet. Something so simple such as overworking himself and getting hurt by the sport was enough to make Victor explode.

He didn’t know Victor’s feelings but right now he had a glimpse of it. He never knew that trying so hard not to burden Victor became such a thing that hurt him in the end.

And it was then that he remembered the timer that he hid so much under his gloves.

That utter defeat, the death of his pet, the way how the numbers went black --- everything.

“Victor,” He called with a hesitant voice. In front of Victor as the man who believed in him and the man who gave him so much deserved to know. Yuuri doesn’t want to hide anymore either.

With his fingers, he gently lifted the corners of his glove and showed it to the Russian. The timer looked the same as expected since the Grand Prix Final. Big black tattoo-like numbers on his skin.

“50 days, that’s around the corner.” Victor finally said after a few minutes of silence. "Mine's too far away though. You're lucky."

“No,” Yuuri whispered but Victor heard it anyway. “That’s not it.”

The memories came like a flood --- never ending pictures flowing through his aching head.

The quads he failed to land, the sound of reporters and the flashing lights from cameras, the sound of Mari’s voice over the phone to bring news of a dog’s death and the feeling of being farther from Victor as he stood on the podium and finally --- the way how the numbers just faded onto his skin accompanied by the terrible pain in his chest and the sudden realization.

“When you won at Grand Prix Final,” Yuuri continued, trying to prevent himself from shaking. “When I watched you stand on that podium, the numbers on my wrist faded from red to black.” He took a deep breath and when Victor’s hand was there to hold his, he gripped it tightly as if the presence of Victor’s warmth would heal him of the grief he felt of the destined one he failed to meet. “When you stood on that podium, my timer froze and then I suddenly realized that my soulmate was---”

_Dead._

He couldn’t say it. This was his weakness. His anxiety, his grief and all the other ghosts and fears that haunt his mind. 

The silence suddenly pierced his ears in the form of hurtful ringing, his chest felt constricted and it’s getting harder to breathe. The last time he ever felt that horrible sensation was before the free skate in front of Celestino and now, in front of Victor.

His knuckles were turning white and he couldn’t feel the warmth of Victor’s hand no matter how hard his grip was but before he could say anything else, the man in front of him just wrapped his arms around him and brought Yuuri’s head to his chest as his fingers stroked his black threads of hair. 

He couldn’t hear what Victor was saying but surely it was for him to calm down. 

This was the weakness he feared to exposed but he trusted Victor enough for him to see and no matter how awful it felt to say the words, he was thankful that he did.

_“As someone who loves you.”_

The words echoed within the ringing in his ears and slowly, it begun to fade. He could hear Victor’s heart beating in his chest and just by listening, he could find himself breathing again.

_“As someone who loves you.”_

At that moment, Yuuri just closed his eyes to listen to the sound of Victor’s heartbeat because right at that very moment, he knew that Victor’s heart did beat for him and him alone.

xxx 

Yuuri’s mother was angry at him for once.

She had a whole lecture that was that of the length of all Sophocles plays when she saw Victor supporting her son on the doorstep and Yuuri hadn’t heard that much from her ever since high school. Still, his mother sent him some food, medicine for his cold and a cold compress for his feet in silence. He thanked her of course but she only responded with a scoff which was the first one that Yuuri had seen in his entire life.

His mother does get that mad.

For the rest of the day, he stayed inside his room sitting and covered in blankets to stare at the ceiling with nothing in his head. Not about what happened, not about his panic attacks or his dead soulmate--- nothing. Even so, with nothing flowing in his brain he found it hard to sleep and every moment he closed his eyes, there would be some kind of invisible temptation that urged him to open them. 

A knock was on his door and when it opened without his reply, Victor was already rushing in with Makkachin.

“Victor” Yuuri said without thought.

“How are your feet?” Victor asked before sitting down next to Yuuri on the bed.

“They hurt less than earlier.” He replied, knowing that an ‘I’m fine’ was another lie.

Victor smiled and lifted the corner of Yuuri’s blanket and wrapped it over both of them, both their shoulders hitting in the process.

“It’s always cold here in Hasetsu and I don’t know why.” Victor laughed at this and just moved closer to Yuuri.

“Isn’t it colder in Russia?” Yuuri asked with a chuckle and the Russian man only smiled and leaned his head on Yuuri’s shoulder.

“Maybe I just wanted a reason to share a blanket with you. No one really knows.” He replied nonchalantly.

And with Victor’s head on his shoulder, Yuuri stared at the walls that used to be full of his idol’s face, posters and magazine articles that were now in a box under his bed.

“Sorry about bursting out like that.” Victor said, ripping the silence between them apart. “I’ve experienced having those bruises and scrapes too. Yakov gave me an earful.” He laughed at this, probably remembering his days in Russia and his coach’s scoldings. “Sometimes, the thought of overworking seemed needed and logical but in the end, it’s something that an athlete really shouldn’t do. I ended up not skating for a week or two because it since my feet would hurt so much to even walk.”

“Sorry” Yuuri said, not finding any right words to say.

“It’s okay.” Victor replied “You’re working hard enough Yuuri. You surprise me with the way you skate and I’m sure everyone else is too.”

Yuuri smiled at this. It was still hard to believe that Victor was with him but even if he threw the world backwards and then in the right place once again, the moments they shared in Hasetsu were real. The Victor beside him right now was real.

“So, where are the posters Yuuko told me about?” Victor asked and Yuuri could feel his face flushing in embarrassment. 

“W-Why did---”

“She told me by a slip of the tongue.” He replied, scanning the walls for some leftover fan merchandise that Yuuri might have accidentally left. “How many were there?”

Yuuri couldn’t see himself but he was sure that his face was red. The posters. Victor knows about the posters.

“Twenty” Yuuri whispered while remembering every single pose Victor had in those glossy pages, avoiding Victor’s eyes.

“Wow!” Victor said in amazement, even clapping his hands.

“W-Well, I always looked up to you!” Yuuri stuttered.

“Well, I’ve heard that before.” Victor smiled.

He could remember that time they both had when they were watching Hasetsu’s seas and listening to the birds cry over the ocean. He could remember how Victor told him that he wasn’t weak and how he offered to be different kinds of personas according to Yuuri’s liking when Yuuri only wanted Victor to be himself. It would be the times when he could feel nothing but the tranquility of both his mind and his heart. 

_He meets me where I am._

He really does.

xxx 

Victor kissed him.

In Beijing, China, during the China Cup and after his free skate on live television, Victor smiled with a smile so bright and jumped on him, his lips on his. His arms were around him, his fingers on his hair and when they landed hugging on the ice, Yuuri could swear that his heart just stopped.

“This is the only thing I could think of to surprise you more than you surprised me.” He said and Yuuri couldn’t even deny it because it was true. 

It was the first time he got mad at him too. Mad with the big fat tears rolling from his face because of a broken glass heart that was smashed even further accidentally by Victor. The way Victor’s face just changed out of confusion and the way how troubled he looked when he started crying were new expressions that he never imagined Victor would make before. 

Victor was not perfect. He was inexperienced as a coach, a forgetful man and someone who doesn’t know comfort in the sight of tears but that made Victor human. It made Victor reachable for Yuuri and it was okay for him to carry these faults because Yuuri knows that together, they’ll be able to fix each other; their burdens split into two of the same weight on their backs.

The words were spilling out of Yuuri’s mouth like a waterfall. The trouble of the mistakes tainting Victor’s name, the anxiety of dragging him down with him --- all his troubles were poured onto him with no great power to stop him.

“Just have more faith in me than I do that I’ll win! You don’t have to say anything. Just stay close to me!” 

And it ended in that with Victor looking like he had been struck by lightning by what he said.

He never cried before a competition and Yuuri does know that one of his dreams would be not to cry in a competition but crying just cleansed the dark haze inside his heart and the heaviness was gone like how he wiped his tears. Victor didn’t say anything after that but when he offered him a tissue to blow his nose, Yuuri changed direction in a split second for Victor to have some effort in catching it. With that, he poked Victor’s hairline hard to try and annoy him and ended it with a pat.

_You hurt me but that’s fine. I forgive you. We can fix each other up._

Yuuri hoped his words reached him and in the end.

Then came the free skate, his random thoughts and that quadruple flip on a whim, trying to make an unknown expression be painted on Victor’s face no matter what it may be.

And then came the kiss. That immediate kiss on his way out of the rink to the kiss and cry.

Yuuri traced his lips on the ride back to the hotel, the feeling on Victor’s still there. He was staring at Victor marveling on China’s street views through the car window and Yuuri could feel his heart beating in his chest but the feeling wasn’t happiness alone like first time Victor arrived in Hasetsu. It was warmer than the feeling of happiness and it made the world so much brighter in Yuuri’s eyes.

For a quick second, he looked at his frozen timer and whispered an apology slowly and full of sincerity for a lost beloved as a eulogy to the loyalty he had for years and had died the moment Victor put his heart at ease.

_“Stay close to me.”_ Never had he expected those words to come out of his lips for anyone other than his soulmate but they did for Victor.

Love made his heart beat. 

He was in love with Victor Nikiforov.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll be editing the last part of the series and I don't really know yet if I should split the last part since it's kind of long. Well, you'll know that sooner or later when I post part three. 
> 
> Anyway, I was thinking of adding Victor's POV as another fic/sequel for this but I'm still hesitating. Go or nah?
> 
> Again, I wish all of a you a Happy New Year and I hope you enjoyed today's chapter~~
> 
> Comments are appreciated ~~~


	3. i'm afraid of losing you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Yuuri realizes that Victor has his own soulmate waiting for him but Victor begs to differ.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! I just finished midterms and screaming because of my trigonometry exam so here's an update to celebrate! So basically, I already wrote this up before and when I read it again, I felt the pacing was too fast despite its length so I added a little bit of scenes and split the chapter into two so there will be a total of 4 parts for this fic and I hope that's okay~~ 
> 
> By the way, all of you are going to kill me for this I swear.

Taking a spot on the podium during Grand Prix Final felt unreal. It was hard to imagine that it was the same Yuuri Katsuki who was crying on the sidelines a year ago and the man who was standing with a silver medallion around his neck. The statement was both true and false; it was true that Yuuri cried his eyes out of last year’s GPF but it’s false that it’s the same Yuuri that was standing on the podium.

With a year, Yuuri changed and it was Victor who took his hand for him to be able to take a step forward towards that change.

The way the audience cheered, the way they called his name and the way Victor cried when the medallion was placed on his neck made him feel like he was floating to space out of disbelief. It was like being on drugs without the drugs.

But he could remember how Victor kissed him afterwards on the way back to the hotel. He could feel how Victor’s lips was on his in a more real way than before, his fingers in his hair and the small whispers of I love yous in his ears.

Yuuri could also remember how he said “I love you too”

xxx 

The Exhibition skate was nothing like the way he and Victor practiced it.

During practice, Yuuri would have to count the number of times Victor had lost his balance while trying to lift him until the repeated scene would end up being uncountable. They wouldn’t be in sync when skating, bumping into each others’ shoulders and accidentally going on different directions. Both of them weren’t to blame since they didn’t have that much experience with pair skating before.

“Victor, you’re getting old.” Yuuri deadpanned the moment Victor’s knees buckled when he tried to lift Yuuri.

“What? No way!” Victor replied in pants, still finger combing his silver bangs away from his face that made him look absolutely perfect in every way. “Victor Nikiforov would never get old.” 

While Victor was laughing, Yuuri took the chance to poke him on the head harder than before as if to remind him that he was four years older than him, Victor just placing his hand on the place where Yuuri just poked him with a face full of sudden anxiety of his hair thinning out into nothingness.

“Y-Yuuri, you’re cruel!” Victor fake cried, taking the smaller man in his arms in an embrace. “So if I’m older you’ll leave me? I thought we were getting married!” He whined.

He could feel his ears heating up and the same heat traveled to his cheeks to color them into a dark shade of red that no amount of ice coldness could erase. Victor was too close to him and the way his lips were already whispering in his ears made his heart beat in his ears. 

“Yuuri~” Victor called again, his tone a lot more prolonged. “You don’t want to get married?” 

Victor let him go and Yuuri caught a full view of his face, his eyes pleading and his hair disheveled combined to an expression that was full out worried or a mix of both sadness and worry that it was possibly illegal.

_Fuck._

“I want to marry you.” Yuuri replied sheepishly, averting Victor’s eyes being an attempt for him not to notice the red tint on his face. 

And Victor’s mouth tugged upwards into a smile. “What was that? I couldn’t hear you.”

He leaned in closer to him, his face inches away from his that Yuuri couldn’t even hide the blush anymore.

“Yes, I want to marry you, Victor.” He said with a chest full of confidence and before he could say anything more, Victor leaned in closer to give him a soft chaste kiss on his lips.

Yuuri didn’t know how many times Victor kissed him after the China Cup but surely, Yuuri didn’t need to question how it made him a lot more complete than how he used to be.

The day of the exhibition skate, however, Yuuri didn’t feel all those light feelings during practice. They were stronger than ever before.

There were no kisses, no hugs, only them on the ice, skating to the song that brought both of them together, the song that helped them find each other in the midst of great oceans but Yuuri could feel his heart beating faster and louder in his chest for the man in front of him.

His hand was on his cheek swiftly before he turned and with each step came a wish that he wanted to come out of his lips but with Victor, he didn’t need to because the way he smiled at him was proof enough that he got his message.

_Stay close to me, Victor._  
_Don’t leave me, Victor._  
_I’m afraid of losing you, Victor._

_I love you, Victor._

He could feel himself being lifted up and turned, he danced and spun with the music controlling his limbs like he was drunk and he truly was drunk; drunk on love for Victor. When he saw Victor’s eyes light up, he could already tell that Victor wanted to tell him the same words but he didn’t need to.

_“I love you too, Yuuri.”_

x x x 

Yuuri was traumatized by alcohol and the way the champagne just stared and tempted him to take a glass and down it in his throat felt a lot more scarier than any horror movie. The thought of him being drunk on literally champagne was too frightening and deathly would be the word for the thought of him challenging everyone to a dance off with everybody taking photos of each contest.

Oh God, the photos. 

They were on each top skater’s phone and now that Phichit has a copy of each one, he didn’t know if he could actually live in this planet anymore.

How could he even say yes to pole dancing? Just why?

“Don’t worry Yuuri, I love you and your drunk self so indulge yourself in all the champagne you want! Pole dancing Yuuri was so sexy!” Victor wanted him to get drunk. It was obvious. He saw him pack an extra SD card on the way and Yuri accidentally texted him that he was buying one as well if anything happens and by anything, he meant Yuuri getting drunk on his ass and pole dancing with Chris.

No. Never again. Fuck champagne.

Victor looked pretty much disappointed that he didn’t get to see drunk Yuuri pumping up a party like there was no tomorrow.

“Not drinking?” Victor asked when he found Yuuri on the terrace after the dinner.

“No. I won’t be.” Yuuri said, reminding himself that champagne is his enemy and his enemy is champagne. “Never again.”

“Aw, I was kind of hoping for it.” Victor wrapped his arms around Yuuri’s body from behind and placed his chin on Yuuri’s shoulder before whispering. “But if you dry hump another coach, drunk or not, I’ll really get mad~”

He didn’t know how hard he turned red with that statement but judging by Victor’s chuckle, Yuuri guessed it was a lot. 

“Other than that, I was hoping for more dance battles.” Victor said, laughing. 

Yes, Yuuri saw how happy Victor looked in the pictures. No, how happy they both looked. Mila always commented that both of them already looked married in the pictures rather than people who just met and Georgi seemed to agree.

“We could dance right now.” Yuuri said, turning around to see Victor’s wide eyes. “Unless being drunk is a prerequisite to dance with you.”

Victor smiled and his gaze softened; the look he gives Yuuri like he was the most beautiful thing he laid eyes on. His warm hand took Yuuri’s hand gently, he gave a kiss to the ring on his finger, the ring that Victor himself put and the ring that Victor himself announced about being engagement rings. 

At first Yuuri thought it was a joke but when they arrived in the hotel bringing the topic back up with Victor saying: “And if I said that I meant them to be real engagement rings?”, Yuuri spent his first night being skating living legend Victor Nikiforov’s fiance.

The music was muffled from the distance but both of them didn’t need it to waltz step by step in a slow pace and with their eyes lost in each others’. There was no banquet, there were no skaters other than them in that moment, slowly swaying by the hand. And slowly, their bodies went close and Yuuri closed his eyes to lean his head on Victor’s chest, listening to the heart that only beats for him.

“Ew, gross.” The mood was broken by no other than Yuri Plisetsky, who gracefully entered the terrace with a bag of swear words to swear at them but Yuuri didn’t mind. “seriously, why do you have to look at each other like that every fucking time? You see each other every fucking minute like what the fuck? Don’t you run out of those fucking stares? It’s disgusting.”

“Yurio, if Lilia heard you talking like that then you’ll be in trouble.” Victor said before going back to his seat to talk to the gold medalist.

“What? Fuck. I can say anything I want!” He said loudly and Yuuri still couldn’t believe that Yuri had more guts than him to swear with class in the suit he was wearing. 

Yuuri took a seat next to Victor to sigh. Surely, Yuri never meant anything he said and was just a genuine soft soul inside him underneath the tiger fashion that screams “What the fuck do you want?”

“So, how’s winning gold?” Yuuri asked with a smile and Yuri only smirked at him before smacking his hand on the table and lift his chin triumphantly.

“Better than winning silver, pig.” Yuri said but that wasn’t enough to erase the smile on Yuuri’s face. He was contented with how he skated at the GPF to be offended at what Yuri said.

“Don’t listen to him, Yuuri.” Victor said in a sing song voice, waving his phone in front of both of them. “Yurio’s just happy because he found his soulmate.”

Yuri’s eyes went as wide as saucers before his jaw hit the floor.

“What the fuck.” He said in shock, a rosy blush invading his face. “W-Who told you?”

Yuri looked like a completely different person. Now he definitely looked like a kitten.

“Mila did.” Victor replied. “She couldn’t help but call me at 12AM just to scream about Yuri finding his beloved. Yes, she really did scream and it woke Yuuri up.”

“That hag.” Yuri hissed, probably planning on what he could do to Mila without her throwing him off the window before his plans would work. 

Victor had a smirk on his face and when he kept his phone and just put his chin on his palm while eyeing Yuri, he somehow knew what he would say next.

“So? Who is it?” It was clear that Victor knew who it was and was using his tone to tease the boy.

The red on Yuri’s cheeks grew darker by the minute and with a face getting grumpier by the second, his stuttering voice didn’t match the expression made on his face.

“O..bek…tin” He mumbled mostly to himself.

“Who?” It was Yuuri this time, doing it half for teasing and half for curiosity on who Russia’s Ice Tiger was destined to be with.

And Yuri’s face was basically a tomato now before he stomped his feet and took a deep breath to scream the name on the top of his lungs.

“It’s Otabek okay!?” He said loudly.

Otabek Altin. Yuuri was somehow expecting him that it didn’t come out as a surprise. The way they exchanged “good lucks” before heading onto the ice and the way they happen to always be there beside the kiss cry to approach each other as if they were communicating through stares enough. Another thing that made it a little obvious was when Mari and Minako caught them talking to each other on the cafe with Yuri not looking like he could murder someone out of his hate for the world.

“No wonder you can’t curse at him.” Yuuri said, smirking. “All I could hear was a lot of ‘davai’s’ and ‘great jobs’ from both of your lips.”

“No, I curse at him!” Yuri said in defense, pulling his chair out of the table in a cluttering mess before setting himself down with his cheeks puffing. “Yes, I fucking do.” He mumbled, as if to convince himself as well.

“Well you may curse at him, but you do not hiss at him.” It was Victor this time, accompanied by cheerful laughter.

“I do not hiss!” Yuri barked back with an obvious hiss.

“That my son, is a hiss.” Victor said, pointing his index finger to Yuri.

“Shut up, both of you are not my parents!” Yuri replied, voice louder and filled with fake venom.

“You hiss at your parents but not your soulmate? I’m disappointed.” Victor shook his head saying his words with much sarcasm. He was having fun and Yuuri knew it.

Yuuri just had to laugh at how Yuri seemed like a cat --- a cat that hisses on everything that moves and purrs at its owner. He could remember how hostile Yuri looked the first time he had seen him after kicking the cubicle door during the Sochi GPF. That face Yuri gave him was absolutely terrifying and it awfully reeked of death and a thousand I’ll kill you glares but seeing that the boy had the same look stuck on him with a bright red flush over his ears and cheeks, Yuri seemed more harmless than ever.

A grumpy cat he is.

“I can’t believe I’m fucking spending time with you. You’re embarrassing.” Yuri said before he angrily pushed the chair back with a pout and just stormed out of the scene with much grace that Yuuri just wanted to thank Lilia for making the boy a prima ballerina even when storming out an embarrassing scene.

While Yuuri was busy laughing, Victor took the time to stand up and wrap his arms back to Yuuri and get a hold of his scent.

“Now we’re alone, Yuuri.” Victor whispered.

Yuuri smiled, putting his hand on Victor’s as if telling him to never let him go.

“Vitya” Yuuri tried saying and after the call, he could feel Victor’s arms on him wrap tighter.

“That sounds so right for you to call me that.” Victor replied.

And there, Yuuri just smiled and took time to feel being in Victor’s arms --- protected, safe and loved.

But in the midst of the wonderful seconds that slowly passed, a string of red numbers peeked out of Victor’s sleeve and for a moment, just one moment, Yuuri felt his heart ache again, tighter than the time he saw Nishigori with Yuuko, more frustrating than the time he lost his soulmate and most painful thing he could ever have felt.

How could he be so blind?

Victor still has a soulmate.

xxx 

When the Grand Prix Final came to an end, Yuuri moved in with Victor to St. Petersburg after the agreement of Victor competing and being a coach at the same time.

At first, it was rough. Victor had gotten some trouble with managing his time. He didn’t have moments where he could lay down with Makkachin that much or stroll around the seaside and everyday, he spends it on the rink for himself or for Yuuri. Yakov, as always, gave intense training repeating over and over like a fire alarm that Victor’s skills just rusted up and was no good. Yuuri felt somehow responsible for that and sometimes, he just couldn’t bear to hear people about how Victor degraded or how Victor change or how Victor whatever rumors they must have spread.

Victor would always say that it was fine while telling Yuuri to ignore them. Yes, the words from the people outside seemed easy to ignore but the ones inside his head surely weren’t. The Yuuri who was scared to death inside him kept shivering and kept scattering whatever predictions he could come up with and it was frightening for him.

Yuuri wasn’t scared of the words coming out of others’ mouths. He was scared of his own thoughts about him, about Victor and about them; he was scared because he knew that there would be no sharper words that could pierce him other than his own.

Victor’s tiring himself out, he’s not getting any better as a skater…

And Victor still has a soulmate waiting for him.

“What are you making?” The chain of thoughts were broken the moment Victor asked, leaning on the counter for him to get a full view of Yuuri’s face.

“Piroshki” Yuuri replied, and once again gave attention to the dough he was rolling out. He was trying to learn Russian dishes to take a taste of Victor’s hometown and the things Victor liked.

He could notice Victor’s pout even when his eyes were already on the dough. 

“Yuuri ~” Victor whined and Yuuri swore that he even beat Makkachin on that cuteness gauge. “You’re giving the piroshki more attention over me? I need to recharge my Yuuri needs!”

Yuuri chuckled at his plea. Seriously? Yuuri needs? 

“Victor, it’s our day off. I’m cooking for you so wait for me at the table.” The way Yuuri said it just made Victor even pout more and rush to Yuuri’s back to give him one big embrace that Yuuri almost dropped the rolling pin. “V-Victor!”

“I don’t want to! Too tiring to wait I want my Yuuri now!” He sounded like a kid especially when he embraced him tighter from behind and landed his chin on Yuuri’s shoulder. 

“You sound like a kid, Vitya.” Yuuri said, finally looking at his blue eyes. Victor smiled at this before Victor gave a small peck on Yuuri’s lips.

“You know I love you.” Victor replied, sinking his forehead on Yuuri’s shoulder.

“And I you.” Yuuri said, bringing his fingers up to comb Victor’s silver hair.

And for a few minutes, Victor didn’t seem like he wanted to let go. Instead, the actions he gave seemed like he just wanted them to stay like that until God knows when.

“Vitya…?” Yuuri whispered, worried.

“Yuuri, don’t worry.” Victor said, his voice full of concern, one hand traveling to Yuuri’s right one covered in flour to hold it tightly just to cease the trembling that Yuuri thought the man wouldn’t notice. “You’ll be okay. We’ll both be okay. Everything will be okay. I’m here.”

_So you noticed…?_

Yuuri didn’t know but ever since he went to live with Victor, he would find himself cooking just to get the anxiety gripping on his body to lessen and his trembling hands would break the plates so Victor had to buy plastic ones. Victor noticed that he was worried. Victor noticed that he was not fine.

“Victor, don’t you want to go and find your soulmate?” Yuuri asked after much hesitation but the thought was already killing him inside. The thought of Victor meeting his soulmate and choosing that person over him seemed so painful that Yuuri just wanted to give everything up and bury himself alive out of the feeling.

This wasn’t right. Yuuri knew it well. Yuuri knew how it felt to lose a soulmate and Yuuri knew that soulmates were made by destiny themselves. So if destiny carved out soulmates, why weren’t his numbers the same with Victor’s?

It drove him crazy; that one single thought. The thought of the world never wanted them to be.

“Yuuri,” Victor looked up at him, his eyes looking so pained but his voice sounded stern like he was angry. “I have you. I don’t need anyone else.”

Victor was loyal and Yuuri knew that even in a million years, Victor wouldn’t cheat on him but as Yuuri looked at the rings shining on their fingers, Yuuri could only wish that the man didn’t lie.

xxx 

Yuri wasn’t so grossed out by how they show affection anymore like how they started out. On Yuuri’s first nights in Russia, Yuri would accidentally walk in on them in the middle of something and would just stand there and scream out of disgust but now, he didn’t seem like he cared anyway.

“It’s not like I have any more childhood innocence to protect after seeing you guys eat each others’ faces each time I visit.” Yuri said nonchalantly like he actually had been traumatized. 

It was break time and Victor was chatting with Mila while Yuuri was with the young blonde Russian, holding out his phone to see Otabek from the other side of the country. 

“How’s China?” Yuri asked and his face absolutely lit up the moment Otabek smiled.

“It’s fine.” Otabek said “Apparently, Guang Hong’s pretty friendly.”

Yuuri was happy for Yuri that he finally found his soulmate. Truthfully, the boy actually thought that soulmates were a waste of time and that he wished he didn’t have one but Otabek just stole those beliefs away the moment he swept Yuri off his feet with a badass motorcycle. Truly a wonderful story.

“But both you and Otabek-kun aren’t dating?” Yuuri asked when Yuri finally said good bye to Otabek. 

“No” Yuri answered with slight annoyance, probably wanting Yuuri to go leave him be. “Otabek wanted to wait until I’m in the right age and I also guessed that it would be better to start as friends first and let the relationship naturally flow into lovers. We don’t need any fucking hurry so yes.”

For Yuuri, it was kind of amazing. Soulmates who waited forever for each other only to wait some more for a label felt like something Yuuri could admire. It proves just how destiny works like how Yuuko and Nishigori found each other in an early age but they ended up strong and steady, married and with three children despite the years in between.

It just shows how destiny was never wrong. 

So if destiny was never wrong then would he and Victor leave each other when the time comes?

The memory flashed in his head; the exact moment the numbers turned black. Yuuri couldn’t help but notice how thin the air was getting and how his chest tightened so much that it pained him to breathe.

He can’t feel that kind of grief ever again. He can’t stand being left again. Not now, not with Victor, not that he and Victor went through so much.

He just can’t.

“Hey, katsudon.” Yuri was the one to shake his shoulder, the face he was offering was surprisingly worried but Yuuri could only guess how it really looked like when the boy’s face was already blurring inside his eyes. “You’re white as sheet.”

He couldn’t speak. He couldn’t tell Yuri not to worry about it. What was there was only the feeling of fear caging the words in his throat.

“Yuuri, Yurio!” Victor skated towards them and Yuuri didn’t know how bad the timing could be. He just wants to head to the bathroom again and calm down but his legs wouldn’t move, his lips wouldn’t part --- Yuuri was frozen on the spot. “Yakov just dismissed us.”

“My name’s not Yurio, geezer!” Yuri hissed before disappearing through the doors.

This was not good.

“Yuuri?” Victor took a glance at him, his hand on Yuuri’s shoulder. “Yuuri, are you okay?”

No, he can’t get an attack here. Victor was too tired to deal with Yuuri’s problems. 

And so, Yuuri took a deep breath and tried to control the shaking of his limbs with all his might and strength he could possibly have.

_Breathe, Katsuki Yuuri, breathe._

“Just tired.” Yuuri managed to say weakly, giving Victor this crooked smile in return.

Victor, giving a few more seconds for Yuuri to pull himself together, squeezed his grip on Yuuri’s hand before planting a kiss on the back of his palm.

“Everything’s going to be okay. Everything’s going to be okay.” Victor repeated like a mantra before bringing Yuuri in the middle of the rink with their eyes locked with each others. “You remember this, right?”

Victor brought Yuuri’s hands on his shoulders and Victor’s on Yuuri’s hips jut like how it all did in the banquet after Grand Prix Final.

And then Victor began to lead him to the same dance they did on that balcony with the music only in their heads. They swayed right to left and spun like how they did back at that wonderful time.

It seemed unreal. The way Victor’s gentle smile was only for him and him alone, the way how this moment was just theirs and theirs alone, the way Yuuri thinks that they would always be together --- all felt like a dream. One ridiculous dream that he would wake up from.

Yuuri couldn’t be any happier that Victor was always beside him. He couldn’t ask for more when Victor took his hand and now they were waltzing all over the rink.

Yuuri felt so happy that everything there at that moment in time just made his heart hurt so much.

He couldn’t stop the pain from spreading and he couldn’t breathe and bring himself to think that this was all real because all Yuuri could think was how everything that was happening was not meant for him.

Everything that happened between him and Victor was supposed to be for his soulmate and Yuuri took those moments away from them and it hurt. It hurt so much that Yuuri thought he could die from the thorns piercing his heart.

“Why…” Yuuri whispered, bringing the dance to a stop. 

“Yuuri?” Victor said with much confusion.

“W-Why are you doing this to me?” Yuuri looked up at Victor’s blue eyes to show his teary ones until the droplets finally went down to stain his cheeks. “Why did you take my hand? Why did you say those words? Why did you kiss me like you really mean it?”

“Yuuri, what’s this about?” Victor’s hands were on his now, panicked and worried.

“Why did I have to fall in love with you, Victor?” 

All of a sudden, Yuuri could see everything fall to pieces. The days they spent in Hasetsu, the endless hours of training, the chain of I love you’s and kisses --- everything was falling into pieces that he could never think of fixing.

“What are you talking about, Yuuri?” Victor tightened his grip on his hands, pleading him to stop.

“Victor, I love you. I love you so much, I really do.” Yuuri said between sobs, his mind racing and his throat burning. There was this prickling feeling inside him. He wanted to hug him, he wanted to kiss him, he wanted to never let Victor go but was that really possible? “But the more I love you, the more I’m scared that everything will disappear.”

“Yuuri….” Victor’s eyes were getting teary too and as if the whole world just announced its end, soundless tears fall from his eyes endlessly. “Yuuri, what are you saying?”

Yuuri could remember it all but the pain in his heart was more painful than the time he lost his soulmate. In the end, Victor was meant to be unreachable for him. Victor was meant to be far from him because Yuuri was not destined for anyone at all.

“Victor, we can’t be together. We just can’t----”

“Yuuri, what’s wrong? Did I do something? Are you tired of me? Yuuri, just---”

“Victor we’re _not soulmates!”_ Yuuri finally screamed, the words echoing from the walls as if it was a slap given to Victor hard. 

“Y-Yuuri?” Yuuri could actually hear his heart breaking on how Victor’s voice cracked. 

“We’re not soulmates…” Yuuri repeated, not sure if it was meant to remind Victor or himself. "You have someone waiting for you, Victor. I'm not the one who should be here!"

And Victor couldn’t reply and Yuuri thought this was it. This was the end of his dream, this was the part where he wakes up and finds himself back in Hasetsu because Yuuri knew that this dream wasn’t meant for him but it was just the universe’s way to mock him.

“Yuuri, I don’t give a shit about that!” Victor said, gripping Yuuri’s shoulders tightly, desperately begging him to take the words back. “Yuuri, don’t you know how painful it is for me too? Don’t you know how many times I wished my timer would just be linked to yours? It haunts me everyday but Yuuri, Yuuri _oh God don’t do this to me_ , just don’t.” Victor was already screaming, holding Yuuri like he was holding onto dear life. “Why do we need numbers to link us? Why do we need timers to tell us who we love?”

“Because that’s how things work! Victor, I know how it feels to lose a soulmate and it sucks so please just listen and ---”

“But I love you dammit!” Victor cut him off and Yuuri just wants to run away, run away now before his heart finally dies and surrenders from the pain. “I love you so much and I don’t need any timers to make me feel this way. I love you more than anything else, Yuuri. So please…” 

Victor embraced him tightly as he could as if doing so would stop his timer from going forward, as if doing so that both their fates will be rewritten.

“...don’t throw me away… stay close to me…” Victor whispered, trembling and absolutely terrified.

But Yuuri was scared too. And so, for the very first time, he whispers a sorry and pushes Victor away. With one last smile, Yuuri leaves.

_You can’t love me anymore, Victor._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I swear guys, this has a happy ending so for now, let me say my sorry :-----)))))))
> 
> So once again, I'd like to remind everyone that there's still 1 chapter to settle things and stuff so yeah. I'm also thinking of posting Victor's POV as a separate story after this is finished so I hope you'll also enjoy it!
> 
> Also, thank you for all the kudos and comments and reads I just feel so loved <3333
> 
> Comments are appreciated~~
> 
> Talk yoi to me on Tumblr! (rimacchii.tumblr.com)


	4. he meets me where i am

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which both Yuuri and Victor find themselves home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! Here's the last chapter~~ I'll be posting Victor's POV as a separate story soon and I'm also planning to write another YOI fic as an AU! When that time comes, I hope you'll support it as well~~ lololololol. Anyway, please enjoy the chapter!

The thought of Victor was lingering everywhere; in his skates, on the rink, in the hot springs and in his food --- everything. The very first week without him made him feel like a moving corpse, dragging his feet on the tatami. 

“You look glum, aren’t you gonna practice?” Mari asked, surprisingly, while puffing smoke from her cigarette. 

Yuuri didn’t want to process the question the moment he heard it so he hummed first while keeping his eyes on his phone and changing his wallpaper to the system’s default theme.

“No, don’t feel like it.” From the corner of his eye, he caught Mari shrugging before leaving the house and Yuuri knew that she had a lot more questions to ask but didn’t say a single words about them since not everyday would they see him having a Russian man appearing suddenly in his life and toss him up to the Grand Prix Final podium and in the end have the Russian fly out of the continent away from him forever.

But that was the truth. He made Victor leave and without further goodbyes, Victor did leave.

It was fine. This was the right thing to do. He shouldn’t be stealing someone who still had a living soulmate, that would be unfair.

He took a look at his timer, half wanting it to glow red again and half wanting it to disappear and sighed before collapsing on his bed.

For the first time upon looking at the mark, Yuuri’s heart doesn’t crack.

It shatters instead.

xxx 

He left Hasetsu a year later.

All the days he spent in the rooms he and Victor used to once roam and the rink he and Victor used to skate every single day were just like icy fingers wringing on his neck until he couldn’t breathe. Sooner or later, all the places in Hasetsu were like places underwater in which Yuuri was stuck drowning while looking at everybody else around him breathing.

His mother and father were against it at first, having Yuuri go work abroad again and not return for years but it was both Mari and Minako that convinced them, saying that even he needed space to pick the pieces of himself back up. They never told them about Victor but somehow, the look of his parents before he left was just clear evidence that they knew about what went on with the both of them too. 

He flew on a plane to Detroit, to where Phichit currently was. 

Phichit had a fickle mind and Yuuri knew that the most. One year, his home rink is on Thailand and the next, he’ll move back to Detroit like it was no big deal but this time, it was Celestino that convinced him to stay in the States. 

“Yuuri!” He could recognize Phichit’s high pitched scream anywhere even in a crowd of busy businessmen. 

Heavily clothed with a large smile plastered on his face like a child, Phichit raised a large cardboard with red spray-painted letters jagged and compressed on it. _“Waiting for my bro for fries”_ the sign said, and Yuuri almost thought of turning around and booking another flight to Hasetsu.

“You look horrible. You look like you just hooked up with I don’t know, Satan in a sacrificial waterfall of… blood.” Phichit greeted.

“You make it sound like I’m a girl on her period.” Yuuri replied with scoff.

“No, you look like a person worse than a girl on her period; you look like an actual man with a period.” Phichit remarked, fixing his now-grown bangs that reached his brows. “How dare you look at me like you haven’t slept in a year? Are you not aware of my glorious presence?”

“And you’re supposed to be my best friend?” 

“Now I’m just offended. I’m the bestest!” Phichit praised himself, taking one bag from Yuuri and putting it over his shoulder. “You should be thankful.”

“Did JJ infect you with that narcissism? Because if he did I’m leaving.” Yuuri let out a small laugh before threatening to move to the other direction.

“Celestino gave me some money for McDonald’s.” Phichit relied, showing off with a fan full of money.

It did not take Yuuri a second to bring his bags back to Phichit’s way into the city. One can never say no to food, especially now that Yuuri’s finally considering to retire after not participating in any skating competitions since Victor left. In the end, he couldn’t bring himself to perform in front of a crowd. He tried during the latest Japan Nationals, prepared a program and a theme but when his name was called, he just went home, trashing his music and his costume along with competitive skating all together.

It was ironic that he came to hate skating at one time, loved it afterwards and now just remembered by it by people other than himself. He didn’t want to remember that one Grand Prix, he didn’t want to remember the programs in it or the theme or the person that choreographed it and in the end, Yuuri finally noticed that he began to hate competitive skating like he was once again back in that training center in Detroit. But now, he didn’t hate it because of inferiority, he hated it because competitive skating hurt him more than how Hasetsu did. 

“So what, you coming back or nah?” Phichit asked with a mouthful of fries.

“Nah.” Yuuri replied with a bite of his burger. “Don’t want to.”

Phichit only stared at him for the first twenty seconds, his face having the most suspicious expression while biting the straw on his coke.

“Should I quit too?” And Yuuri was just silent, no, shocked by what he said, the fries on his mouth literally falling on the table when it went agape.

“Why would you even want to quit if you love skating?” Yuuri said, choking on whatever that was in his throat.

Phichit blinked once, then twice, like he was overall confused with how Yuuri reacted. 

“You love skating and you’re quitting.” Phichit replied with the saddest smile Yuuri has ever seen and for a second, Yuuri just regretted all his life decisions at the image. “Since I’m your best friend, I can’t let you slip on ice, have head injury and be in a coma. As your best friend, it’s my duty to slip on ice with you, have head injuries with you and fall in a coma with you. That’s final.”

“Phichit you would never want to fall into a coma with me even if your life depended on it. You would rather have insomnia than not watch the next Benedict Cumberbatch movie.”

“I could always have Leo show me those movies on my hospital bed.”

“Phichit, would you like to break Leo’s pure soul showing you a Benedict Cumberbatch movie to your stupid comatose body? The boy still has to marry Guang Hong!” Yuuri argued.

“But I have no one!” Phichit said dramatically, raising his burger.

“You have me!”

“But we’re best friends!”

Yuuri doesn’t even know why they were fighting anymore. And so, with all the nonsense flying out of his brain, his sighed in defeat and slouched on his chair.

“Look, I quit because the rink doesn’t feel… right to me.” Yuuri said, finally, pushing away his burger towards Phichit who has been eyeing it for the past ten minutes,  
Before grabbing the burger, Phichit opened his mouth and closed it back, hesitant on the words to use and as if Yuuri predicted what he was going to say, he felt his eyes water.

“It’s about Victor, right?” Phichit managed to say and Yuuri just lets the tears fall to confirm it.

xxx 

Yuuri found himself looking at his ring that night.

It still hasn’t lost its golden glow and it still shined under the fluorescent light like hoe it did under the stars when they were in Barcelona. He could still remember how he slid the same ring on Victor’s fingers, he could still remember how his face heated up and his heart beat fast, he could still remember how Victor said he would marry him.

He could still remember,

He could still remember ----

Yuuri shook his head, and as the skin on his fingers burned with the desire to forget, he bit his slip, let the ring slide off of his finger and threw it on the dresser’s drawer.

If only discarding his feelings was as easy as discarding that ring.

xxx 

A few months after, he’s thankful that Celestino found him a stable job in Detroit. It involved skating of course, but Yuuri had no right to refuse when he felt like he needed to stop being all whiny and dependent on his best friend. He wanted to at least help Phichit with the rent he was paying since he was the one crashing in his place for a bed and food but even the Thai said that it wasn’t a big deal since Yuuri has always been and will always be his room mate and his presence was enough payment.

That hurt Yuuri’s pride though. So, with all the confidence he could muster, he asked Celestino to help him find a job and as swift as lightning, he saw his caller ID two hours later and like magic, he had a job to teach children how to skate. 

Sure it was skating but it didn’t involve all the jumps and spins that he had been long rusty in. Mostly, it included holding little hands to prevent little bodies from face planting on the ice. 

He made a living out of it. The pay was enough, he was staying with Phichit and he contacts his family often. He doesn’t look at skating news or do spins and flips, he was finally someone who could blend into the crowd in a few years without anyone recognizing him.

And lastly, within a few years, the name Yuuri Katsuki, former silver medalist of the Grand Prix Final just became an illusion along with Victor. Like both didn’t happen at all.

“Waaah! Let me help teach kids too!” Phichit bursts into the skating rink uninvited, his voice high as usual with a tone that obviously meant to grab attention.

“Phichit!” Yuuri almost let go of the girl’s hands the moment he heard Phichit’s voice piercing the atmosphere.

And just like magic, the kids were suddenly skating and falling towards Phichit, who entered the rink without even Yuuri’s permission.

“I told you to go back to the room the moment you land in Detroit.” Yuuri sighed.

“It’s boring there!” Phichit was already grabbing his phone to take selfies with the kids to post on Instagram and Yuuri was already ready on covering his face with a gloved hand.

“Celestino will not only drag you by the ear to rest but he’ll also scold me!” Yuuri argued.

“Since when did you get so uptight?” Phichit laughed. “Loosen up a bit.”

The kids were already trying to hug Phichit all at once and the Thai had to use up all his balance to prevent himself from falling over. But Yuuri expected this, nonetheless. The kids he were teaching were dreaming to be athletes like both of them, figure skaters, pair skaters, ice dancers, the list goes on. They knew who Phichit was especially after he landed the podium in last year’s Grand Prix Final in third place. There were even some kids who wanted to learn how to skate because of him.

“No, you’re just too happy go lucky.” Yuuri mentioned but Phichit ignored him after the children started to bombard the Thai with endless bullets of questions.

It brings some warmth in Yuuri’s heart to see children coming to love skating since in the end, even he couldn’t discard it. They way they smiled and the way they skated reminded him of Ice Castle and of Yuuko, the one he always practiced with. 

He made his way back to the bench to drink some water and just spend the next ten minutes staring at how the kids glomped Phichit on the ice. Yuuri could see Phichit’s glowing red timer from where he sat and he could remember how Phichit said that he didn’t mind if he doesn’t find his soulmate but if such existed then he would wish that they would hurry up and meet him. 

Yes, Phichit was as fickle as the weather so Yuuri didn’t blame him for the inconsistency.

Perhaps the man was just getting jealous because everyone they knew started getting married and dating. Yuuri saw some posts that Jean-Jacques Leroy was already married to the fiance he once saw in GPF and Guang Hong and Leo, who were already found soulmates when Yuuri met them, started dating officially with a huge label on their heads just recently so it was no surprise that Phichit was getting somehow impatient.

“Hey, I saw Seung Gil smile for the first time and realized that he was hot.” He remembered Phichit blurting out in the middle of the night.

“And what? Did you hook up with him?” Yuuri replied.

“As if!” Phichit got up from bed and threw a pillow on his face, his own beet red. “Seriously, with other people you’re all shy and sweet but with you’re with me you’re suddenly brimming with much confidence that you could actually swear.”

“I hate swearing though.”

“That’s not the point!” Phichit fell back to his bed. “Why are people finding each other while mine can’t find me?” 

_At least you still have someone to look for._

He’s gotten over it somehow, no, not the right terms. He’s gotten _used_ to it; being alone. 

Yuuri knew that he would never have a soulmate and that someday, Phichit would find his own beloved and at that time, Yuuri would be truly alone but it was fine, he was prepared for it.

He was prepared for it because he thought nothing could hurt him as much as when he left Victor behind. 

Where could Victor be? Yuuri predicted that he was with his soulmate. Phichit said he retired skating a few years back after winning his last gold medal in GPF.

_Does he hate me?_ Yuuri was wondering that it was for the best that he did because if Victor hated him, if Victor resented him, then he wouldn’t forget about him and that would at least make everything a little bit better for Yuuri --- that the only person he ever loved would never forget him.

“Yuuri, why don’t we be soulmates instead?” Phichit said with a laugh.

“I’d rather die in a ditch.” Yuuri laughed back.

“You know, never have I expected Yuuri Katsuki to say those words to yours truly.” 

Yuuri’s thoughts were broken and he was back in that rink, staring at the children and how Phichit was doing spins to either teach them or show off. Both seemed true.

Yuuri could remember doing those. The joy of landing a jump, the way how he ran from exhaustion to perform a flip at the end of the program, Yuuri remembers but couldn’t imagine doing them again.

“Yuuri!” A child was running towards him, a ten year old girl who was one of his first students.

Yuuri hummed in return. 

“You won silver at that one Grand Prix Final right?”

And Yuuri didn’t know how to reply. The coldness of his feet was spreading to his heart.

“Umm, y-yeah.” Yuuri replied hesitantly, half regretting it.

“Wow! Then you’re even better than Phichit!” She smiled, showing all gratitude and relief that he was her teacher.

Yuuri wished he just said that the man who won silver wasn’t him.

xxx 

At 2AM he found himself in his own home rink years ago. The secret entrance he and Phichit discovered was still there and apparently, Celestino didn’t notice it.

There, he skates Yuuri on Ice like how he did before. 

He skated like Victor was watching.

He skated like he was back in Barcelona’s Grand Prix Final.

He skated like he was that GPF silver medalist years ago.

But his feet tangled up in the quadruple flip and he spent minutes lying on the ice. There was something pulling his heart down so much that it hurt. 

That program was his story --- his story with Victor; their story.

And after all these years, it still hurt.

xxx 

Phichit found him at 3AM and offers him canned coffee from the nearest 7-Eleven store like how he used to years ago.

This time, he hugs Yuuri in silence until the pain was gone.

It was then that Yuuri wondered on what he did in his past life to deserve a friend like Phichit.

xxx 

Yuuri was homesick but he didn’t want to go back to Hasetsu.

He had long forgotten how home felt like.

xxx 

Phichit grabbed him into a plane that was flying hours away to Switzerland.

It was Chris’ wedding and Phichit spent the whole night trying to pick out the right tuxedo for Yuuri to wear in the occasion even if Yuuri already refused to go a thousand times. Phichit was however, persistent and managed to drag him in the airport for their flight. 

“Chris is our friend!” He started when they both boarded. “I can’t see why you wouldn’t want to go to his wedding.”

Because obviously, Victor will be there.

But Phichit probably knew that and the look on the man’s face clearly gave Yuuri the idea that all he wanted was for him to end all the grief and pain regarding the Russian. That maybe seeing him and finally cutting ties or fixing the problem properly would heal Yuuri of his misery, of his curse for soulmates and of his cries about it at night.

As expected of Chris, his wedding was extravagant and well… filled with everything that shines; just like his programs. 

He never really talked to Chris’ soulmate before but Yuuri did remember seeing him in GPF. 

It was at that moment that Yuuri felt like he was in the banquet again, bottles of champagne everywhere, everyone in all the formal clothes and for some reason, there was a pole in the middle of the room. He won’t be drinking anything to use it though.

He saw some familiar faces that he didn’t even bother on talking to. He saw both Yuri and Otabek kissing on the balcony and Yuuri figured that both of them finally got that label of lovers. He hasn’t seen Yuri for years after all, surely Otabek already made some moves and confessed already. Mila was with Sara and surprisingly, Michele wasn’t against it. He figured that Mila and Sara finally acknowledged the fact that they were soulmates. JJ was with his wife, he wasn’t as talkative and narcissistic as before and for some reason, he talked so humbly that Yuuri half thought that some ghost was possessing him.

But that’s what love does, it changes people.

Yuri doesn’t seem that hostile anymore, Sara and Mila aren’t afraid of letting others know of their relationship and even JJ seemed nice. 

It somehow sickens him.

It sickens him so much that he wants to turn his back and run away.

He wants to run away because he could have those. He doesn’t deserve those because destiny took it from him. 

Suddenly, he could feel the anxiety building up, choking his neck.

_What if Phichit finds his soulmate and actually leaves me?_  
_What is I truly end up alone?_  
_What if I’ll have nobody until I die?_  
_What if I’ll die without anybody knowing me anymore?_

There were so many what ifs that he could conjure up. He knew what would happen in the future and thought he was prepared for it but Yuuri realized that no matter how prepared people are, no one can truly erase the fear that was lingering with it and Yuuri was indeed, scared. Scared that he’ll be left by everyone he knew because he was the one who didn’t have a significant other.

Perhaps that will be his karma for leaving Victor.

Without any more thoughts and words to Phichit, he ran away from the place.

xxx 

He was in the park. He thinks.

He forgot to bring his coat with him and it felt awfully cold.

The swing he was sitting on had its chains squeaking but it was fine with Yuuri if it was enough to distract him from his thoughts. In the end, he didn’t regret escaping that room. He didn’t want to greet anyone and let them introduce their soulmates to him, a person who had none. 

He wondered if his soulmate would have found him if they didn’t die.

He wondered if his soulmate was Victor, would he be happy?

There were so many things that he gave up --- Hasetsu, Ice Castle, Yuuko, competitive skating, Victor, he was already thinking if everything was worth it or if everything he did was right. 

At that time with Victor, was it better if he became selfish? Was it okay if he just kept him all to himself even with the knowledge that he had a soulmate? Yuuri didn’t know. He can’t turn back time and find out and even if he did, it would be too late. He was too tired to fight for such thing; love. It did nothing but hurt him.

“Yuuri?” And there it was, a voice all too familiar already ringing in his ears. 

His feet were suddenly ice and when he lifted his head up, he could finally see him. Platinum hair with eyes as blue as the sky. He looked just like how Yuuri pictured. 

Victor Nikiforov was running towards him with all the emotions Yuuri could find in his eyes.

And just when Yuuri was about to stand up to get away, Victor’s arms were around him, and he could feel the warmth melting the ice spreading within him. How he missed this, how he missed being in Victor’s arms. It was a dream.

He didn’t struggle. He was just there, feeling all the emotions making his heart beat while letting his eyes water and pour tears on his cheeks.

Meeting him again has never made Yuuri feel so hurt and relieved at the same time.

“Yuuri, Yuuri, Yuuri!” Victor repeat his name like a mantra, burying his face on the man’s shoulder and hugging him tightly as if fearing that when he lets go Yuuri will disappear again.

“Victor…” Yuuri whispers with a broken voice, finding his arms rising up to the man’s back.

Ah, Victor was just as he remembered. He looked older, sure but he was the same, he was the same Victor that hugged him tightly just like this.

“Did you meet your soulmate?” Yuuri asked, feeling his heart already cracking.

And Victor was silent and only squeeze Yuuri in return.

“...I did.” He replied hesitantly.

_As I expected._

Yuuri’s head was already flipping. This was his karma, this is the part when Victor finally lets go of him. So if he does, will he finally be free? Yuuri thinks otherwise because at that moment, he realized that after all these years, he still loved Victor.

“Congratulations.” Yuuri’s voice cracked.

_Ah._

“Yuuri…”

_I can’t do this._

“I’m glad you finally met the one destined for you.” He continued, lowering his head. He doesn’t want Victor to see that he was crying.

_Now, you’re ready to forget about me even if I can’t because even now, I still love you._

“My soulmate doesn’t want me.” 

Yuuri couldn’t hear anything else. He lifted his head, tears falling from the corner of his eyes to look at Victor’s face. There was a tired smile on his face and his eyes were screaming from exhaustion but inside, there was a flame burning with emotion.

_Victor, were the past years you spent without me the same with how I spent them?_

“She loved someone else and no matter how hard we tried, we couldn’t love each other. I couldn’t love her.” Victor continued. “I couldn’t love her because I love you even up to now.” His hand was on Yuuri’s face, his thumb wiping away the clear tears staining his cheeks. “I tried to skate, I won more medals and gained more titles, but I was lost. I didn’t know where to go. Home wasn’t in Russia. Home wasn’t in Hasetsu. I felt the need to give up a lot of things.”

He pulled him back into a hug, tighter so Yuuri could feel how his heart beat, how Victor’s heart beat for him and only for him.

“But now, I found you and realized that home was where you are.” It was the very first time he heard Victor’s voice crack and within seconds, they were a mess of their own tears. “So this time, Yuuri, don’t throw me away.”

“I was an idiot.” Yuuri managed to say. “I was the one who left you. I tried so hard. I tried so fucking hard. I gave up skating competitively, I left Hasetsu, I found a new way to live but I was still empty! I still love you no matter how many years passed. And then I asked why the hell was life so unfair? Why did it have to kill my soulmate? Why can’t I love who I really love?” And Yuuri swallow the lump in his throat. “Why am I not allowed to love you?”

Swiftly, Victor pushed Yuuri from the hug and took his lips on his. 

How Yuuri missed this. How Yuuri missed every single part of Victor. 

The way he hugged him, the way he kissed him, everything was the same despite how much time tortured them.

“You can love me, Yuuri.” Victor whispered to him the moment their lips parted.

“Can I? Can I really?” He asked back.

“You’ve been too selfless for too long.” Victor replied, bringing their lips together again and parting. “Have you ever thought about what you wanted?”

“I want you.” Yuuri said with a hug. 

And Yuuri meant it. He really did. 

With that, he apologized to whoever tattooed their timers on their wrist. He apologized because he had to choose to be selfish because he wanted Victor all to himself.

“Stay close to me, don’t go, I’m afraid of losing you.” Victor whispered after he planted a kiss on Yuuri’s forehead.

And this time, this time for sure, Yuuri felt truly warm again. Truly alive. All the anxiety went away for a split second for this was the start of their stories once again with those words like how it did years back through a video --- and this time, he won’t allow tragedies.

“I won’t leave.” Yuuri replied. “Even if the time comes when you won’t want me anymore, I’ll still be by your side!”

“If that’s the case, Yuuri will forever be mine now, right?” 

Yuuri could only nod and whisper a yes.

Yuuri realized that love doesn’t need to feel like how everyone feels it. Love doesn’t need to make you feel the butterflies in your stomach ---- love only needs to feel like home.

And Yuuri was back home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It ends happily! *throws candy in the air*
> 
> See you in the next fic!
> 
> Comments are appreciated.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading chapter 1/3! Comments are appreciated~
> 
> You can talk YOI to me on tumblr: @rimacchii.tumblr.com


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